


To Save A Life

by Coldsaturn



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Guardian Angel AU, I'm Sorry, M/M, Reincarnation AU, also it might be slightly sad, but it does end on a positive note, dramatic historical events are mentioned, it's reincarnation guys, names are screwed up because I was trying to be edgy, so someone dies repeatedly, sorry about that too, starts guardian angel and ends charlie's angels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-29
Updated: 2016-10-29
Packaged: 2018-08-27 19:01:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8412994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coldsaturn/pseuds/Coldsaturn
Summary: "Andrèas," he finds himself whispering, testing the name on his tongue, trying to figure out the feel of it, what kind of soul he will be bound to for the next hundreds years. One never knows how long a returning soul will last before exhausting their life-energy, and Nethanel is more than a little excited at the idea of meeting this new person.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [broship_addict](https://archiveofourown.org/users/broship_addict/gifts).



> My fanfiction for the aftgexchange event, written for [Broship-addict](http://archiveofourown.org/users/broship_addict/).  
> A huge thank you to [Aionwatha](http://archiveofourown.org/users/aionwatha) for proofreading this mess at the last second <3  
> Every mistake left is my fault, rip self.

  
  
The first time Nethanel is assigned to his first reincarnating soul, he's ecstatic. He's been working as a guardian angel for four hundred years, accompanying what they call mortal souls along their lives on Earth until it's time to move them to a higher plane. Every soul has an expiration date, the day and hour, minute and second in human time it will die, but the universe is exceptionally complex in its simplicity, and guardian angels like him are required to keep the soul from leaving its mortal body sooner than their time. Sometimes it’s a boring job, years dripping second after second till the inevitable death, and other times his intervention is necessary to save what he couldn't call anything other than murder magnets. Always efficient, never too attached to the souls he had to leave at the Gates at the end of his assignment, he has earned his promotion with hard and honest work. He is now ready to receive his first returning soul.

"Nethanel, your turn."

Dawid's deep voice calls him from the desk at the other side of the seat he's occupying, and Nethanel stands up, making his way out of the row of chairs with a string of apologies to the other angels who were waiting with him. At the desk he finds a simple yellow envelope, thinner than the ones he was used to with his other assignments. Inside there's only a name, elegantly written in golden ink on a white sheet.

"Andrèas," he finds himself whispering, testing the name on his tongue, trying to figure out the feel of it, what kind of soul he will be bound to for the next hundreds years. One never knows how long a returning soul will last before exhausting their life-energy, and Nethanel is more than a little excited at the idea of meeting this new person. It’s the part of the job that he likes the most, the reason he had applied in the first place; despite the bitterness of the mortal life, the sadness of their parting with close ones or alone after however many years their journey lasts, meeting humans is always an enriching experience. They're colourful, and passionate, and tragic, and so deep. Nethanel was taught to keep his distance and watch from above, but whenever he feels that it is safe he will walk side by side with his soul, pretending to be visible and alive. Not that he really desires such a thing, he knows enough of the mortal perils that he is content with watching and touching the invisible screen separating him from the mortal plane, safe and in the perfect position to absorb all the good there is.  
  
"Whenever you're ready, your room is the third one on the right down that corridor," Dawid says, pointing in the direction of an arch at the other side of the waiting hall.

Nethanel nods and takes the envelope with him. He probably ought to look around and commit everything to memory, because there's no telling how long he will be away. Guardians of returning souls don't come back until the soul has exhausted their energy, they simply switch to the next incarnation once the previous one has ceased to exist. He smiles and greets other guardians as he approaches his room, the colours around him getting sharper as his excitement rises. The door is of a monotonous light grey like all the others, along a seemingly endless archway.  
  
Inside, a simple armchair, enclosed by four white walls. It’s like sleeping, one angel had told him. It’s like taking a nap and waking up with one thousand and two hundred years added to your job sheet, had said another. Luckily enough they don’t have real muscles to feel the ache. One of Nethanel’s assignments had been so quick it felt like the black instant while blinking, but even if it came down to that again, Nethanel thinks about his next phase as a journey.  
  
He walks inside the room, closing the door behind him, and wonders how long he will be away, what kind of soul he will be matched with, how many new things about humans he will learn. He reaches the armchair and slowly sits on it, briefly worrying his bottom lip as he leans back against the backrest. The seat is comfortable, he notices, even though it probably won’t matter in a moment. Nethanel shifts again, focusing on where he can put his arms, if on his lap or the armrests, and in the end opts for his lap. He takes a deep breath, smiles to himself, and closes his eyes.  
  
He appears together with the cry of a newborn in 1875, south of England, and Nethanel smiles as he looks down at his assigned soul. They look pained by the first breath of their life, but the voice is clear and strong, and Nethanel is instantly fond of the creature. After the baby is cleaned, a breath of fine gold hairs shine on--his head, right below the purple string of coded numbers that count down to the end of this cycle and the beginning of the next. Glancing at it, it reads 67 years 10 months 280 days 56 minutes and 30 seconds ticking inexorably toward 0 and then again. It's enough time for a human, Nethanel supposes, and focuses on his task for the next decades.

Turns out that Andrew is a feisty little kid, full of laughter and mischief, always ready to make anyone either laugh or grunt in frustration. If the small child has his way, he will have both.

He grows up with a sharp tongue and quick wit, two traits that Nethanel will learn to associate with all his reincarnations. His life is relatively free of worries: steady job as a lawyer following his father's footsteps, a successful marriage with the daughter of an influential family, two sons and a dog. Nethanel barely needs to do anything beside following him.

What kills him, in the end, is predictably his fondness for cigarettes. Nethanel is shaking his head in front of his death-bed, but Andrew doesn't look like he regrets anything. He’s surrounded by loved ones, and really, it doesn't get much better than that.

Nethanel appears next to a sleeping baby. He remembers that small round face like it was yesterday, and for him it was. Andrew's face is clean and radiates warmth, the birth clearly having taken place more than an hour before. Nethanel knows in theory that the soul can take a bit of time to reach the new body, but it's the first time he actually sees it happening. He wonders what it feels like for the baby not to have a soul. With how small they are they most likely don't notice it, and that's probably a good thing. The count on their head reads 73 years, and Nethanel nods to himself. Good job, little Andrew.

Andrew is Andrea, born in 1968 in North Italy. Her family is very religious, and she spends her entire childhood claiming that she has a guardian angel. Her mother doesn't correct her, but she talks about imaginary friends when Andrea can't hear her, her voice turning sour with envy. Andrea seems to always know where Nethanel is, because she frees a chair for him on the correct side without ever making a mistake, and Nethanel is subtly extremely amused. It happens here and there to have humans more perceptive than others, but Andrea has such a fierce way to care about what she thinks are Nethanel’s needs, that he can't help but break in a smile every time. When Andrea has her parents buying a matching plush for her angel’s sleep time, Nethanel only regrets not being able to touch it.

Around her eleventh year Andrea stops perceiving Nethanel, and looks rather embarrassed by the whole thing. She doesn't mention it again, and quickly changes topic when her parents bring it up in playful joke. She meets her future husband in high school, decides that she wants to become a teacher, and spends the next decades taking everything that life has to offer. She tries bungee jumping when she's thirty-one, and Nethanel has to double check Andrea’s protections because this could be a one way ticket to the afterlife before due time. It goes well and Andrea shouts louder than Nethanel has ever heard her while she plummets down the bridge, but it turns into a half laugh when she bounces back. Nethanel is pretty sure the other seven souls he has attended to in his earlier assignments weren't this reckless.

Heart failure touches her when the time comes, after Nethanel had to prevent a couple car accidents and a few other small events that would have led to Andrea’s premature death. Her husband died three years ago, so there's only Andrea’s daughter and son-in-law  in the hospital room as she slips into nothing like she's releasing a sigh.

He appears next to a crying baby, and Nethanel is silently thankful for the sound. Even though he knows that the departing moments are short in comparison to the rest of the soul’s life, they're sad, and not being able to look into his soul’s bright hazel eyes has started to make Nethanel feel a weight on his chest. The baby is healthy and blond, as usual, and the count on his head goes 6 years and 2 months. Nethanel frowns and looks around, as if the room could give him the answer to his unspoken question. It's rural and cold, devoid of all the comforts the other two had, and the only source of light comes from a candle lit next to the bed. Nethanel closes his eyes and focuses on his surroundings to pinpoint his coordinates in time and space.

 _Oh_ , he thinks, looking down at Andrei and lifting his hand to caress his head. It doesn't work, of course, his hand goes right through the baby’s skull and comes out from the other side, unsubstantial. It's 1340 in east Romania, the black plague will take everyone in the family, and Andrei is born only to know hunger and the stench of death.  
  
When Nethanel appears again he immediately looks for his soul, feeling a pull that he doesn’t know how to explain, but he needs to see the baby, needs to hear their voice. A woman is saying “I’m sorry,” as another breaks into sobs, and Nethanel appears in a new place.  
  
Nethanel is rooted on the spot for a few seconds, too surprised to register what has just happened, and as a sharp baby voice cries their first breath, his eyes feel too warm and his knees too weak. Nethanel follows the sound, walking past and through other four children until he finally meets him again. New England, 1703, and the count over Andrew’s head says that he will die at 57 years old. That needs to be enough.  
  
This Andrew is different from the others he has met. He’s more industrious and less prone to “waste breath” in jokes. He has his brothers and sisters to help, and even though he’s not the eldest son, he still wants to be praised for being a good boy. He’s strong and doesn’t tire even after a whole day spent in the field next to the farm; at Church many girls like to look at him, though he doesn’t appear to notice or be interested. Nethanel guesses the girls are attracted to his strong jaw line and thin, straight nose leading to full lips. He is handsome for human standards, and his gold hair shines under the sun like he’s a cherub come alive from one of the paintings hanging in the chapel. Nethanel once steps right in front of him to confirm that he has blond eyelashes too, thinking that this boy will break many hearts in his life.  
  
It does happen, though not quite in the sense Nethanel had imagined. Andrew reaches adulthood without ever knowing a woman, and focuses all his energies on working and helping his family. He follows puritans customs and still doesn’t show the smallest hint of perceiving Nethanel’s presence, which shouldn’t really surprise him, but at the same time makes him wonder about what makes some humans different from others. Andrew marries in the end, as it is custom to do, but nothing about the whole ordeal makes Nethanel think that Andrew is doing what he really wants, whatever that may be, for even a single moment.  
  
Five kids and a farm later, his marriage is as loveless as it had looked like in the beginning, and Andrew never stops giving Nethanel the feeling that there’s more to him than what meets the eye, more of what really makes Andrew _Andrew_ , but it’s buried so deep that nothing bigger than a quick flicker in his eyes reaches the surface, occasionally. He cuts his leg during a perfectly preventable fall, and the wound festers till it poisons his blood. He dies before Nethanel has the chance of finding out what he has missed, what could have gone better.  
  
He appears in a small room at night, the lit candle next to the bed setting dread on him, and he hurries as soon as he hears the baby’s cry, feeling as old as he has ever been while he reads the count on the baby’s head: 83 years and 7 months. He closes his eyes and feels so light-headed he thinks he’s being called back home. He was starting to worry that he was doing something wrong. The mother calls the baby by his name, and Nethanel is momentarily pulled out of his thoughts. Andrew again, even though they’re in the 70s in New York.  
  
Nethanel despairs after Andrew for thirty-seven years, as the problematic kid grows into a teen with a worrying taste for alcohol and drugs. Nethanel has never had to intervene so many times to save someone’s life, and he’d like to shake Andrew by his shoulders and ask him if he has any idea of what he’s doing. His family prays for him day and night, and it only seems to make Andrew more furious with life, which in turn makes Nethanel more and more active, until he feels so in touch with the mortal plane that he might just slap some sense into Andrew’s head.  
  
A near overdose barely avoided by Nethanel is the metaphorical slap that Andrew needs to turn his life around: he tells his parents he’s gay, gets kicked into a rehab centre with the hope that he will detoxify from that bad habit too, and there meets his future husband.  
  
Nethanel keenly remembers the spark in Andrew’s eyes, and even though the different reincarnations shouldn’t be tied together, he can’t help but think that this is what his soul was missing. It’s all too obvious in the happiness that fills him, and Nethanel instinctively shares his joy, because hearing him laugh and joke and enjoy himself is what makes all this worthwhile. Nethanel protects him and extends his hand to Andrew’s husband every time he can, hoping to give them as many years together as possible. They don’t have their families anymore but make one themselves with their close friends, and life flows by with road trips and music and two cats and loud laughs. Andrew’s husband goes one month before him, smiling weakly and telling him “See you on the other side.” Andrew is determined and hopeful, and Nethanel buries his face in his hands, scared until the last moment that Andrew will suddenly see him and understand his own fate.  
  
He appears in a room for all of thirteen seconds, the silence deafening.  
  
He appears in a small room and twenty-five pair of eyes are wide with fear, their shudders so evident that it feels like the ground itself is shaking. Nethanel notices that the ground is, in fact, shaking. Everyone has a countdown on their heads and it reads 3 minutes; they’re in Coventry, England, 1940.  
  
“No, no no no no please,” Nethanel begs as he reaches for the baby still in the arms of one of the women helping the emergency delivery. He needs to take him away, take him somewhere safe, anywhere but here. 2 minutes and 10 seconds, Nethanel focuses all his energy to make at least his hands corporeal, to be real in this plane of existence, tries to touch the woman with Andrew in her arms and nothing happens. He shouts in frustration, tries again and again, and still the woman won’t budge, and the mother starts whispering a prayer. 40 seconds, everyone joins in the slow litany, Nethanel’s lips have never been closer to a curse. When the countdown reaches 0, he drapes himself over Andrew in a desperate attempt to make even the smallest difference.  
  
He appears somewhere, but he finds himself already on his knees, folded over and sobbing through tears that he can’t shed. His arms are still crossed over his chest from his vain attempt at hugging Andrew and protect him with his body.  
  
“Why are you crying?” A child’s voice asks, too close to Nethanel’s ear to be directed to anyone else other than himself. And yet it can’t be. After another shudder leaves his body with the faint feeling of physical pain, he lifts his head to stare at Andrew, small and _alive_ . His too-big beret covers his forehead and most of his golden hair, if not for the rebellious strands around his ears and on his nape, and Nethanel can’t believe this, because it’s all wrong. He’s not supposed to reach the reincarnation so late, it would only mean that Andrew has only now received the soul from his previous life, but there has never been a case of a human waiting years for it.  
  
“Are you hurt?” Andrew asks again, reaching out with his hand and then somehow thinking better of it and putting it back in his pocket.  
  
Speaking to him seems sacrilegious. “You can see me?”  
  
“You’re a bit too big to ignore,” Andrew smirks, then sits down in front of him, leaning in to peer at Nethanel’s face. “You aren’t really crying,” he says smiling, like it’s a good thing.  
  
“I can’t,” Nethanel answers with the truth, too weak to fabricate a coherent lie. His skin is itching to touch Andrew and make sure that he’s real, that it’s not just a hallucination, he’s not making up a whole world in his head while he’s still in a small room with Andrew untouchable even though within reach, the sky falling apart on them.  
  
Andrew studies him for a few seconds, seemingly content with just their silence. Then it’s like he remembers what he’s supposed to be asking, and he takes in a big gulp of air. “Are you a ghost or an angel?” 

Nethanel’s head shoots up, unwilling to believe what he had just heard. “What?”

Andrew tilts his head, then says “I usually see ghosts, but they look different than you, and they don't cry. I have only seen five angels, and they look like you a bit, and they have been with me a little while but then they all left.”

“I wasn't crying,” Nethanel answers, focusing on the only detail he has and firm grasp on.

Andrew nods, agreeing with him. “Because you can't.” Then brights up, and Nethanel sees that he still needs to grow a tooth or two. “Do you want to be friends, yes or no?”

Nethanel looks up over the kid's head and reads the countdown, relaxing when he sees that the first number is already a 7. 79 years and 6 months.

“Yes,” he says, relaxing his shoulders after what feels like eons, “Let's be friends.”

1771, a no-man’s countryside in east Europe, an itinerant circus is moving with all its vibrant colours and loud artists. Andraž, as the name of this reincarnation turns out to be, is the son of the only fortune-teller in the group, and, apparently, has the talent of seeing through the veil of the mortal plane. His mother lies, he says, whereas what he sees is so real that often he can’t figure out if it’s safe speaking to someone in public, with the risk of it turning out to be a ghost and people around him saying bad words to him. That’s how he came into contact with lost souls left wandering on earth, and with five guardian angels who at one point or another of his life told that they had been assigned to him, and then left suddenly after a certain amount of time.  
  
“I never get a warning before they go, and then after a few days a new one appears. Like you did,” says Andraž one day, after Nethanel asks him if he has any clue of why the other guardians left him. “Maybe they don’t like me,” he jokes, his eyes squinting when he smiles with his missing teeth and pink tongue peeking out from the spaces.  
  
“I don’t think that’s possible,” Nethanel simply says.  
  
Nethanel has never had a real friend, not like Andraž is to him, and for very first time, Nethanel feels like he’s really living every single moment like a human does, can see them piling up behind him and looking like a mountain where before he would have seen only a minuscule pebble. He watches Andraž growing up into an adolescent who knows too much about the world because he has seen it through eyes that weren’t his. It’s when he reaches his sixteenth  birthday that he starts to understand how unique his case is, and after a loaded conversation with his mother, finds out that he used to be possessed by spirits on and off for the first three years of his life.  
  
“They even called a priest to exorcise me, I was speaking in tongues and all,” Andraž says after blowing out the smoke from his mouth. He has this way of holding the cigarette between index and middle finger that always makes it look like he’s going to drop it any moment, though it never happens. “In my opinion they lost a really good opportunity, can you imagine what kind of show I could have offered?”  
  
“Were you ever possessed after?” Nethanel asks, watching the smoke curling into the chill air of an early autumn. They’re in between two small towns in Hungary, the soft morning fog barely caressing the brown fields, the distant noise of farmers working on their terrains playing in backbeat with the singing of birds flying to warmer countries. The circus has stopped to let the animals take a break from the incessant movement, and the troupe stretch their limbs.  
  
“No, possessions stopped. As for being haunted, though,” Andraž says, smirking in his direction and pulling a smile out of Nethanel. He always manages to, even when Nethanel wants to do anything but. Like now, while he’s busy understanding what makes this reincarnation so different from the others to the point of calling five guardian angels not including him. That’s unheard of, and that’s even more incomprehensible, because back home no one has secrets. It’s more like his guardian angels completely disappeared.  
  
“I think that might be the reason you were assigned to multiple guardians,” Nethanel starts, casually looking around to make sure that no one is around to watch Andraž talk on his own. Not that it doesn’t already happen almost on the regular, but he doesn’t like to push their luck. “The possessions, I mean. They might have put errors in your life code, and so you were given a new guardian every time you were read as a new life, while it was actually reading the ghost’s.”  
  
Andraž hums, non-committal, taking another drag from the cigarette. Nethanel doesn’t like this vice, but after New York everything looks innocuous. “You shouldn’t smoke,” he says anyway, because he still worries.  
  
“The cigarette is right here,” Andraž says, moving his arm so that the lit stick of tobacco is right under Nethanel’s nose. “Take it from me and I’ll stop.”  
  
Nethanel stares at him, feeling unsaid words scald his tongue.  
  
“C’mon, I know you want it. Let it go,” he encourages, showing only amusement at the thought.  
  
Nethanel bites his bottom lip to keep it in but he wants to see Andraž’s reaction too much. “Fuck you,” he finally blurts out, and Andraž throws his head back and laughs without a care for who might hear or see him. It’s free and bright and fresh like the autumn morning, and Nethanel realises for the first time just how far he would go for this soul. It should scare him, instead it’s a grounding feeling, like an anchor in the otherwise endless flow of his immortality.    


Andraž seems completely numb to the opposite sex’s praise for his looks. He generally spends all his time with Nethanel - which is to say, alone - and as he celebrates his twenty-first birthday, Nethanel starts wondering again whether this reincarnation keeps the traits that he has seen in the last ones. There’s no real reason for him to be interested in that, but he can’t forget how happy Andrew had been, and the only thing that he wants now is to make Andraž just as fulfilled. Somehow.  
  
He wants to ask, but Andraž beats him to it and asks whether Nethanel has ever been alive, and how the guardian angel thing works with reincarnating souls like his own. They have a rule that there won’t be any talk about his past lives, established when Andraž was still a teenager and threw a jealous fit when Nethanel slipped out that he had lived more than eighty years with one of his reincarnations. Back then Nethanel had been too oblivious to understand Andraž’s problem, and it had taken the guy working up the courage to tell him clearly that he was jealous because they had been together only for a few years for Nethanel to even remotely grasp the situation. It didn’t make much sense to him; his soul was always the same, whatever body it lived in, but Andraž seemed to perceive it as if he was a completely separated existence from his previous ones, and Nethanel knew better than try to change his perspective. He had promised instead that he would never talk about others while he was with Andraž again, and that had been truce.  
  
That’s why it comes as a surprise when one night, after one of the shows, Andraž gets out from his mother’s tent, walks up to him and asks point blank, “Do you regret being assigned to me?”  
  
“What?”

There’s something heavy in Andraž’s expression, but Nethanel can’t figure out if it’s worry or anger or sadness. Brows furrowed and lips curved downward, Andraž is the living dejà vu of a past that Nethanel didn’t want to make him face ever again.

“What is this about? What happened?”  
  
“The past three hundred years with me, were they heavy? Would you have chosen someone else if you had had the chance?” Andraž walks closer to him, and the question about how he knows how long they have been together dies on Nethanel’s tongue when one of the torches flickers with the wind and reveals that Andraž’s eyes are wet with unshed tears.  
  
Nethanel reaches out with his hand, forgetting that he can’t touch his cheek, and Andraž seems to forget that he shouldn’t be able to feel it, because he closes his eyes at the phantom weight on his skin and sighs, bottom lip trembling through wet breaths. Nethanel knows that he should say something, but the urge to wrap his arms around the young man is so loud and distracting that he can barely remember his own name. He tries, damn him but he tries, stepping forward and hating how he has to calculate the right distance that wouldn’t make Andraž go through his mirage appearance, and hugs him.  
  
Andraž answers with a shudder and a sob which he muffles promptly by covering his face with his hands, and they go right inside Nethanel’s sternum, the detail saddening him like it has become the core of all his problems: they can’t figure out how to make it look right.  
  
“Hey,” Nethanel says softly, barely getting his voice to work past the lump in his throat. “Listen, listen to me, Andraž. I’d choose you. I n a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in every version of reality I would find you and choose you.”  
  
Andraž shudders again and leans in, as if he wants to bury himself in Nethanel’s body. Nethanel does his best to contain him, but his presence is only as influential as what his duty allows, and physical comfort was never on the list.  
  
“You’re my only friend,” Nethanel admits, acknowledging for the first time this incredible thing that has happened with him.  
  
“That’s the most tragic thing you’ve ever told me, and you need to fix it,” Andraž says, his voice coming clear as he regains control of himself and dries his tears on his sleeve. He looks hard and cold, like the winter has seeped into his bones and changed him from the inside. “Fix it, or I’m going to be fucking mad at you.” And with that he turns around and walks away, the code on his head flashing six hours for an instant, fast enough that Nethanel wonders if he has imagined it.  
  
The next day, while Nethanel is waiting for Andraž to come back after being rather coldly instructed to wait there because he needed some time alone, his mother walks up to him. It happened all the time that humans went close to him or right through him without realising, and Nethanel doesn’t think anything of it until she speaks. With the sound of the loud explosion in the fireworks tent, Nethanel sees more than hears Andraž’s mother words: “He will be the reason you die.”  
  
He appears in a hospital, the cry of a baby ringing clear behind two doctors. Nethanel looks around, disoriented, and each scream runs up his back, forcing a shudder that brings him on his knees. No one notices him, the doctors walk through him to get to the mother so she can hold her newborn, and Nethanel lets out a pained sound from the back of his throat as he folds over himself till his forehead almost touches the floor. He stills, mourning Andraž until the mother is discharged one week later.  
  
They’re in France, but it doesn’t matter because little Andrée dies of pneumonia after she celebrates her eighth birthday.  
  
He appears in Salem, over the course of seventeen years he’s forced to prevent twenty-three fatal accidents because somewhere it was decided that they wouldn’t call it a day until Andra died burned at the stake.  
  
He appears in North-East Italy at the beginning of the 1900, and it shutters Nethanel’s heart because it means accompanying André into a trench and watch him slowly lose his mind and be eaten alive by sheer terror. Nethanel has been in the First World War only once with his fourth soul, and it had been the first time he had thought that maybe his love for humans was unjustified. But as he looks at André’s pupils reduced to two pin heads, nothing of that frustration comes to surface, only mind-numbing helplessness. The code on his head reads that two months are left, and Nethanel sits down next to André, wishing he could take his place and keep him somewhere safe.  
  
The two months pass as agonizingly slowly as Nethanel had feared. Every single day is draining and pointless, survivability becoming a nightmare once the death toll starts going up. And it goes up fast, immediately. Nethanel spends his nights pretending that he can hold André’s hand, cursing because his mother’s and sister’s letters take weeks to arrive, and those are the only things that bring the softest fragile smile on his lips. André once again hasn’t known romantic love, which turns out to be quite the puzzle in the current situation; would it have been better for him to have a lover left behind, or were fewer strings better?  
  
Nethanel still doesn’t have an answer when a grenade falls at the end of their section and paints the rocks in red. He waits to appear somewhere else but he’s still in the trench, the screams all around him, smoke and flash of lights making it impossible to look farther than arm-length. He doesn’t want to look. He never had to, the switch happening the instant of death, and Nethanel can’t bear the thought of being still there because--  
  
“-Nel”  
  
Nethanel looks at the ground where André has fallen, his heart looking up at him with recognition in his eyes and a weak smile on bloodied lips.  
  
He appears in a white room. He covers his ears and closes his eyes shut. He begs.  
  
“Stop, please, make it fucking stop, I can’t, I can’t anymore, please save him, someone save him!”  
  
He doesn’t realise he’s actually sobbing until he hears himself, and once he starts there’s no really stopping him. A faint weight leans on his back, then other two at his sides, then one pushes against his forehead, and a smaller weight goes at his nape. When he opens his eyes Nethanel finds himself back home, five angels around him doing a sad imitation of a human hug, every single one of them with their face distraught in pain and exhaustion. It must be the same look they see on him.  
  
“What is this?” He asks, only then looking around to localize where they are. The room looks like one of their standard offices, but he can’t be sure of the exact wing. At the desk behind the angel in front of him, Dawid gives him a small smile.  
  
“We were waiting for you, Nethanel,” Dawid says, standing up and walking around the desk only to sit on it.  
  
The other angels free him and step back, he has never seen them before.  
  
“Now that we’re all accounted for: I need your help. You all have been assigned to the same returning soul over the course of the last five hundred years, on multiple planes of existence. I’m sure you all know how each of your assignment went.”  
  
Nethanel looks around, and the memories look as painful as his own on the others’ faces. If every single one of them has gone through even half of the grief Nethanel has endured, they must be at their wit’s end too.  
  
“This soul, Andrèas, frankly speaking, we want him. He meets all the trait requirements for being an exceptional guardian angel, but he’s one of those desperate emergency cases. We still don’t know what makes it happen, but even on multiple existences, he’s doomed. And it’s wearing him down, his traits are getting weaker and weaker with every rebirth. Now the problem: his next life will be the last one of his soul.”  
  
Dawid waits a few seconds, letting the info sinks in and light up a wire of indignation and anger connecting them. Nethanel can feel it like they’re sharing the same mind, they all have met his soul and learned to love him so fiercely that it has nearly destroyed them. Turning to the others, Nethanel knows that they would all burn the world for Andrèas. That kind of passion is not fitted for their kind, and Nethanel briefly wonders whether this is the moment Dawid gets rid of them.  
  
“One on one hasn’t worked, clearly.”  
  
“So what do we do? Go down together and check on him till he runs out of energy?” One of the angels to his right asks. Nethanel is busy watching Dawid’s knowing smile.  
  
“Not exactly. I don’t need angels, I need an army ready to fight at his side, strong enough to carry his weight and keep him safe. You are free to refuse, but I want you to regress to being mortals, and make sure that you save him. I can’t send you down with your memories for safety measures, all I can do is make it so you will be together at one point of his life, and trust your stats.”  
  
Dawid looks at each of them, waiting for an answer that the whole group has already decided on without even needing to think. Nethanel knows it like they all know it, the idea that Andrèas’ soul is in danger to disappear forever is unacceptable. That can’t be the end of them. It won’t.  
  
“Will we be back here after?” Asks another voice from behind Nethanel.  
  
“Your memories are not guaranteed to return at your death. If that doesn’t happen, you will have to start from scratch,” Dawid says.  
  
Nethanel steps forward, his eyes still flashing the red of the trench when he’s not focusing on looking what is right in front of him. “When can I begin?”  
  
“Me too,” says the angel at his left.  
  
“And me.”  
  
“Count me in,” says the one behind him.  
  
“I’m in.”  
  
“He owes me money,” adds the last one, stepping forward and putting himself at the same line as Nethanel.  
  
Dawid nods, satisfied. “Nethanel, Renae, Kevyn, Elesabeth, Aharon, Nikos, I trust you to bring him here, whatever the cost. Don’t let him fall. Take the door on the left to reincarnate, your time is the late 90s.”  
  
Nethanel looks at his companions, as they do the same to one another with the memories they each had of that time flooding their mind. Nethanel is thinking about something specific but he’s not sure the other are too, so he pushes it aside to bring forth the goal of being with Andrèas again, once and forever. And this time he has freely chosen, exactly as he had promised he would have done, a few lives ago.    
  
Nikos steps between him and Aharon, putting his arms around their shoulders, though Nethanel can barely say he feels it. Renae steps forward to open the door for them.  
  
“As soon as we meet, pizza.”

 

 

  
  
**[continues in The Foxhole Court]**  
  
  
  



End file.
